SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Profound transformations rarely have such a distinct tipping point, but the U.S. Ryder Cup team’s journey from perennial loser to heavy favorite can be traced to a single and seminal moment.
“When some dumb ass opened his mouth,” Phil Mickelson shrugged two years ago following the U.S. side’s victory at Hazeltine, its first in the matches since 2008.
That “dumb ass” was Mickelson who sat at the far end of the U.S. table during the team’s press postmortem following a particularly ugly loss to the Europeans in 2014 at Gleneagles in Scotland.
Four years later it’s impossible to overstate how awkward that moment was as Lefty subtly dismantled the U.